Man’s Search for Meaning

Today I finished reading Viktor Frankle’s Man’s Search for Meaning book. It was fairly fast read compared to the last one (Principles by Ray Dalio). Frankle’s memoir was inspiring with some great messages. Below are some of the lines I enjoyed:

  • Don’t aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.
  • He who has a why to live for can bear with almost any how.
  • What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. What man needs is not homeostasis but what I call “noo-dynamics,” i.e., the existential dynamics in a polar field of tension where one pole is represented by a meaning that is to be fulfilled and the other pole by the man who has to fulfill it.
  • Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being reasonable. Thus, logotherapy sees in responsibleness the very essence of human existence.
  • In some ways, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.
  • What matters is to make the best of any given situation. “The best,” however, is that which in Latin is called optimum – hence the reason I speak of a tragic optimism, that is, an optimism in the face of tragedy and in view of the human potential which at its best always for: 1) turning suffering into a human achievement and accomplishment; 2) deriving from guilt the opportunity to change oneself for the better; and 3) deriving from life’s transitoriness an incentive to take responsible action.
  • If you want anyone to laugh you have to provide him with a reason.
  • I know that without the suffering, the growth that I have achieved would have been impossible.
  • Live as if you were living for the second time and had acted as wrongly the first time as you are about to act now.
  • For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best.

Principles by Ray Dalio

Today I finished reading Principles by Ray Dalio. It’s an excellent book on life and work principles Dalio found helpful and encouraged readers to either adapt these or write their own. Ray Dalio is one of the successful investors in America. I’ve highlighted many sentences and paragraphs in this book. One of the sentences in the last few pages that I enjoyed is, “since your journey and evolution will certainly be a struggle, I hope that these principles will help you struggle and evolve well.” The Principles book is like a reference book that I can refer to when I’m struggling in my journey and evolution as I learn and grow.

Run

Tonight’s run:

Felt great. Nice to explore the neighbourhood a bit. Still missing morning workouts, but awesome to leave the house for some fresh air and movements.

Griffin’s Good Night Words

As a part of our bed time routine, I snuggle the kids for a bit and then tuck them in. When I was snuggling Griffin tonight, he said something sweet and cute that I want to remember forever:

“Dad, I wish I could cut your arm off so that I can snuggle you all night and you can tickle me whenever you want. Don’t worry, I’ll get some strong glue to glue your arm back during the day so you can use it when you need it.”

I wish I could naturally record my interactions with my kids. They are in such a sweet phase right now.

Radically Open-mindedness

I’m reading Ray Dailo’s Principles again. I’m on Part II – Life Principles, Chapter 3 – Be Radically Open-Minded, where he introduces the concept of Radically Open-mindedness. Here are some snippets of what I enjoyed:

  • If you know that you are blind, you can figure out a way to see, whereas if you don’t know that you’re blind, you will continue to bump into your problems.
  • Radical open-mindedness is motivated by the genuine worry that you might not be seeing your choices optimally. It is the ability to effectively explore different points of view and different possibilities without letting your ego or your blind spots get in your way. It requires you to replace your attachment to always being right with the joy of learning what’s true.
  • Sincerely believe that you might not know the best possible path and recognize that your ability to deal well with “not knowing” is more important than what it is you do know.
  • Radically open-minded people know that coming up with the right questions and asking other smart people what they think is as important as having all the answers.

21 Years in Canada

Today marks 21 year I’ve been in Canada. Time flies when you are having fun. I still remember the first step I took on this land and the smell of fresh Canadian air. I didn’t plan to stay here for this long. Life has been good to me. I am blessed.

Back to It

After months off due to COVID-19, kids rugby at James Bay was finally re-opened. It was off for so long that I wasn’t sure if my kids were ever going to play rugby again. I took the kids and Mom to the MacDonald Park in the morning. Kids were in their cleats ready to go. Mom was also ready with her MP3 player loaded with songs she could dance to. The Mini Rugby Group did a great job assigning kids into their perspective groups and spacing them out. Serena had a hard time starting, but got over it quickly and found herself again in the field. Griffin looked like a big kid as he was able to focus and listen to his coach’s instructions. I was chilling at the sideline with Cole in the sun talking about kids, parents and summer plans.

A great day!

Family Gem

It was family jamming session after dinner tonight. We started out singing Lost Boy in the closet, which was kind of strange but fun. I shared with the kids some tunes I’ve been enjoying lately: G Em Am D. I shared it with the kids, and they liked it too. I proposed we write a song together using this tune. Serena went to work immediately. I was surprised by how quickly she was able to come up with meaningful and lovely lyrics. Griffin helped by making sure the lyrics sounded good and climbing all over me and the guitar while I was playing. Here is the four lines we came up with tonight. Needless to say, I was beyond proud of my little munchkins.

Family Gem

G Em Am D

We are a family, in perfect harmony.

Our love is like a fire, that burns until the end.

Many things we can do, but only when together.

Tomorrow will be brighter, with the sun above the seas.

More to come.

System and Organizational Levels

Today at work, our discussion led to me digging out an old information framework I put together back when I first started with CIHI. The framework consisted of three views: System, Organizational and Technical. Each view consisted of categories, and each category contained information elements. For example, the Structure category was under the System view and contained information elements such as Health System Configuration and Government. Question was raised from my colleagues on the difference between System and Organization Views. It’s been so long since I touched the framework and I didn’t have any good answers to the question. I felt bad for not coming up an answer, so I started to search the literature I reviewed back in 2018 when I worked on the framework. I didn’t come up anything successfully; however, I found an article from Implementation Science on biomedcentral.com. This article talked about the different characteristics from organizational and system levels that influenced implementation of shared decision-making. I thought the content was worthwhile to share.

System and Organizational Characteristics (2018)

According to the authors (Scholl, LaRussa, Hahlweg, Kobrin and Elwyn), organizational-level characteristics influencing the implementation of SDM (shared decision-making) has six main categories: organizational leadership, culture, teamwork, resources, priorities and workflows. Five of the six categories also included some subcategories of characteristics. Besides the six main categories of organizational-level characteristics, there were four system-level characteristics that could influence implementation: incentives, policies and guidelines, culture of health care delivery, and healthcare provider education and licensing.

This information is helpful to shift some of the categories and elements identified in my framework and realign them in both system and organizational views.

Reference: Scholl, LaRussa, Hahlweg, Kobrin and Elwyn (2018). Organizational- and system-level characteristics that influence implementation of shared decision-making and strategies to address them – a scoping review. Accessed from: https://implementationscience.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13012-018-0731-z.

Second Tooth!

Griffin was having his Chinese class with Nai Nai today. I was making dinner. Then I heard this scream and out came Griffin holding his tooth. He was telling me how he was eating a chip and the chip bumped his tooth off. He showed me his new tooth hole right next to the one that was empty from a couple of days ago. Three days, two teeth! Way to go, Griff!

Also, I cooked dinner on my own tonight. Normally, I cook with Mom. Since Mom’s with Griffin at Chinese class, I cooked without her help. It tasted pretty good actually. I’m getting a handle of this whole culinary thing 🙂